Purvanchal lagging behind other parts of country for 23 years

New Delhi: The Purvanchal region of Northern India, which has been tagged as Kurukshetra of 2014 Lok Sabha elections, has become the cynosure of everyone’s eyes across the nation. The voters of this region would play an important role in determining who will be the nation’s next Prime Minister after the ongoing general elections, on May 7 and May 12.

However, bitter truth and baffling paradox related to this region is that it is still far behind from the rest of the country by at least 23 years when it comes to income and it’s indeed to heartening to note that the Shravasti district of this region is around 52 years behind the rest of the country.

According to a report of the Uttar Pradesh government in 2011-12, the per capita income of people of 28 districts of the region is only Rs 13,058. This is the three-fourth of the state’s overall per capita income of Rs 18, 249 and the one-third of nation’s Rs 38, 048.

What’s indeed interesting is that the region’s per capita income figure of 2011-12 – Rs 13, 478 was crossed in the national domain in the year 1988-89.

If poverty is measured in terms of per capita income, Purvanchal is the poorest region in Uttar Pradesh. The condition of Bundelkhand, Central and Western Uttar Pradesh is much better than that of Purvanchal.

The pitiable condition of Purvanchal can be gauged from this fact that the per capita income of Shravasti district is just Rs 8,473, which was the national figure in the year 1959-60 and the national per capital income was Rs 8,425 then.

Besides, the per capita income of several districts like Bahraich, Amethi, Deoria, Jaunpur, Siddharthnagar, Maharajganj, Kushinagar, Pratapgarh and Azamgarh is less than Rs 11,000.

Varanasi constituency, which is arguably witnessing the most interesting contest, has a per capita income of just Rs 16, 960.